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The Cresset, a journal of commentary on literature, the arts, and public affairs, explores ideas and trends in contemporary culture from a perspective grounded in the Lutheran tradition of scholarship, freedom, and faith while informed by the wisdom of the broader Christian community.

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The
interdisciplinary study of law and religion encompasses many
subfields, ranging from constitutional law to professional ethics. Among the
most promising work in the field is that which aims to bring the resources of
constructive theology to bear on legal thought. Richard P. Church’s book First
Be Reconciled: Challenging Christians in the Courts represents an important
contribution to this theological turn in legal scholarship.

Church’s
ap­­proach is distinct, however, in that he does not ask how theology might
illuminate legal thought, but rather how theology might shape the church’s
disposition toward law. A theologian and practicing attorney, Church argues
against the dominant approaches to law within Christian thought and
practice—approaches that he sees as having allowed the church uncritically to
accept litigation as a replacement for authentic reconciliation (13). As an
alternative, Church considers the witness of the Anabaptist tradition and
offers the following challenge: “If peace is then more determinative than the
absence of violence, if the reconciliation of God to human and human to human
is the heart of the good news, what then of litigation?” (16).

In
examining the question “what then of litigation,” Church turns to 1 Corinthians
6: 1–11, in which Paul writes, “When any of you has a grievance against
another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous, instead of
taking it before the saints?” Church is clear in his understanding of this
passage’s implications. To borrow from a poster of some years ago that read “A
Modest Proposal for Peace: Let Christians Stop Killing Christians,” the modest
proposal of First Be Reconciled is “Let Christians Stop Suing
Christians.” By so doing, the church might embody a radical ethic of peace in
relation to litigation, a sphere of subtle violence often ignored in Christian
ethics. While much ink has been spilt on the proper response of Christians to
more explicit forms of violence, the coercive character of law has remained
largely unexamined and uncriticized. Yet, for Church, litigation demands to be
treated with the same theological seriousness as war, especially given its
omnipresence in contemporary American life.

The
book admirably succeeds as an admonition for Christians to reconsider the
nature of their participation in litigation. At a minimum, it encourages the
church to confront the oft-ignored scriptural witness of 1 Corinthians. In
fact, part of the book’s success comes simply from its being disarming. In a
litigation-saturated culture, where law is the regnant language and means of ­mediation,
merely calling into question the propriety of litigation can be a radical act.
Yet Church ultimately goes further in also calling for a rethinking of
litigation in light of the church’s eschatological vocation as a community of
forgiveness and reconciliation.

This is
a serious work of theological scholarship that addresses the various ways in
which 1 Corinthians 6 was interpreted by Augustine, Luther, and Calvin. Church
is well aware that Anabaptist ecclesiology, particularly as it concerns the
church’s relationship to political institutions, stands at odds with much of
the received Christian tradition. Church’s critical analysis of the tradition
shaped by these three seminal thinkers is a valuable scholarly contribution in
its own right. However, even with its sophisticated exegesis of 1 Corinthians
and its discussion of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, the book is not concerned
principally with developing a traditional scholarly argument. Church rather
approaches his subject from a practical and even pastoral perspective. First
Be Reconciled is a book written for the church, calling on the community of
believers to critically consider the ways in which litigation has informed
Christian practice. The book gently prods by pulling the reader into an
alternative moral universe—what Church terms “an imaginative experiment”
(105)—rather than by advancing a top-down theological argument.

It is
important to take this book on its own terms and not to fault it for failing to
be a book of a different sort. There nevertheless are limitations that arise
from Church’s decision to not build his argument around a constructive
theological account of law. As it is, the book might encourage a certain
rethinking of Christian approaches to litigation, but it seems unlikely to
effect more fundamental shifts in theological orientation among those who do
not adopt Anabaptist ecclesiology as a starting point. Establishing the
normativity of the Anabaptist approach would require a deeper engagement with
the full complexities of Christian reflection on law and politics. What, for
instance, of the natural law tradition? Of Romans 13 as a counterpoint to I
Corinthians? In different ways, much of the Christian tradition has held that
law is a God-given tool for the maintenance of justice, the upholding of the
created order, and the ­enactment of judgment. By not grounding his claims in a
more systematic theological assessment of these and other relevant issues,
Church necessarily turns to the aesthetic appeal of the Anabaptist witness. I
cannot say that a book organized around the development of a Christian
theological jurisprudence would have been better, but it would certainly have
been a book of a quite different order. And it would have been, in certain
respects at least, a more ambitious book with the potential to be broader in
reach and deeper in impact.

Another
difficulty with the book as currently structured is that it neglects fully to
define the scope of its claims. Church is clear in arguing that Christians
ought not litigate with other Christians. Matters are less clear beyond this
principle. What, for instance, of litigation with non-Christians? Of
commercial litigation? It is uncertain, moreover, how Church understands the
relationship of Christians to the criminal law, for First Be Reconciled
only addresses civil litigation. Are Christians to advocate restorative justice
over criminal punishment? Equally so, what of Church’s answer to the question
Thomas Shaffer offers in the foreword—should a Mennonite become a lawyer? Given
the book’s narrative approach, it would have been interesting for the author to
have discussed his own vocation as a lawyer and the terms on which he finds
such work to be compatible with life in the church. In the end, Church declines
to name a principle that might provide resolute answers to these questions. It
is the challenge of the book, he writes, to resist “the desire for
black-and-white answers to the problems that face Christians living in-between
the times” (133). This might well be the case, but it does seem to avoid a
needed engagement with those deep impulses pregnant within the Anabaptist
tradition that might feed a more totalizing withdrawal from law, just as they
would endorse a totalizing withdrawal from the instrument of war.

I
suspect that the approach taken in the book reflects Church’s commitment to
locating his analysis within the church’s inner dynamic life. In the end, this
is a book not only about litigation but, equally so, about discerning what it
means for the church to be a reconciling community in medias res. Thus 1
Corinthians not only expresses the principle “thou shall not sue other
Christians,” but also the deeper ecclesial logic that informs the church’s
disposition toward the world. From this perspective, the task before the church
is not to address for all time whether Christians can engage in litigation with
non-Christians, but rather to ask how the church ought live out its
eschatological vocation. And herein lies the great strength and potential of First
Be Reconciled, for even those who do not accept its starting point or its
final conclusions cannot but confront the ways in which legal liberalism has
subtly undercut the church’s redemptive work. It is the book’s avoidance of
clear and simple answers that makes it haunting and ultimately quite effective.

Zachary R. Calo is
Associate Professor of Law at Valparaiso University.